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graham carter
I was born in May 1975, making me a healthy 28 years old at the time of writing this. I lived in Gloucester for most of my life, studying art and design at foundation level at Cheltenham and Gloucester College of Higher Education from 1994-95. The foundation course gave me a taste for all facets of design and I eventually found illustration to be the one discipline that could afford me the opportunity to incorporate all of these things in to my work , namely sculpture, photography and painting. Although there wasnít strictly speaking an illustration element to the course, it was through Graphic Design that I branched off.
From Cheltenham I moved to Brighton to study Illustration at Degree level. I suppose I could be accused of being a little to experimental with my work early on, and not in a good way, but I blame that on my social life. I've always tried to put a bit of imagination into my work but I think some of that early work ran away from me a little. I've always had a bit of a taste for the absurd and my work progressed in this vein throughout my 3 years in Brighton but thankfully towards the end of the course I managed to give my work a little more consideration and context. A lot of my work tended to focus on my surroundings, studies of people in my neighbourhood and conversations I overheard etc. From there my work veered towards the humorous, or at least subjects that I found funny.
After Brighton I moved to London and carried on my illustration training into a post-graduate course at St. Martins College. During this phase I guess I managed to hone my style and develop a particular identity which I try to maintain in all my current work. I still enjoy using absurd characters and alternative colours etc. but I tend to place them in mundane surrounds like a leisure centre or a high street etc. Or alternatively I like to place mundane characters or TV characters in unusual contexts, or at least to put my own spin on things. During my St. Martins period I worked with Graham Rawle on an installation for EXPO 2000 which was basically a huge supermarket of scrap products made from recycled rubbish scavenged from Colliers Wood Market. This opened me up to more possibilities in my work and made me think about working to a different scale, incorporating 3D elements to my work and generally about how my work could be used in different ways.
As well as my illustration work I am constantly looking for ways to make my work accessible to the public as affordable art or limited edition prints which are more decorative and less detailed than my illustration. Recent clients include Springer & Jacoby France, Bupa, Orange, M & C Saatchi, Sunday Times, Financial Times, Guardian, Independent, Penguin Books, Man United Review, Saatchi & Saatchi, Skint and the National Lottery. |
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